Social Media is a very powerful tool. It can either build you up or tear you down.
 
15 years ago, social media was a fairly new concept and Myspace was all the hype. Athletes would have to wait in suspense until a competition to see what their competitors were capable of. At that time, if you were comparing yourself to another athlete, it was someone you trained with or a competitor you would see less than a handful of times a year at a National competition.
 
Sometimes you would hear through the “weight vine” what an athlete was doing or read about it on the now defunct GoHeavy.com Olympic Weightlifting forum (which was like Reddit even before Reddit existed). Occasionally, a thread of rumors about an athlete would present itself. These posts were usually listed under a fake name and created by a keyboard coach who wouldn’t expose their identity, but talked a whole lot of smack.
 
Fast forward to present day. We are never far from an electronic device to check what is happening on the internet, more specifically social media. We have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and the professional network LinkedIn. It causes engagement and creates a ‘relationship’ between individuals or companies that you never would have had access to. It has brought people together in marriage; it has also torn people apart in divorce. We now have internet celebrities, heck, we even have Olympic weightlifting celebrities due to their social media presence, not necessarily because of the amount of weight they are lifting or their stellar technique.
 
My pastor recently shared that he was shocked to find out that his 92-year-old mother had 350 Facebook friends when she passed away. Businesses, young people, old people, even pets have social media accounts. There is no limitation to who or what can be on social media.
 
When a person is flipping through their social media feed, they have their conscious mind and their unconscious mind. There are things that your mind is unknowingly paying attention to and then there are things that you are consciously paying attention to. You can both consciously and unconsciously be paying attention to the amount of weight being lifted, technique, what the athlete is wearing, how jacked their traps or quads are, the brand of weights being used, the color of the bar (I’m digging that new pink one!), the appearance/setup of the training space, or the number of followers the person has, amongst many other things. The list can go on and on.
 
When on social media, we have to think, “Will any of this make me a better athlete?” No, no it won’t. Knowing what lifts so-and-so does or what new Lulus they’re wearing will probably not help you lift more. At times, we can be our own worst enemies and self-sabotage without even realizing it. When you’re thinking about the other athletes on social media and what they posted, you’re not thinking about you, the only person you can control and can have an impact on. An individual’s constant comparison to the people they follow on social media may cause anxiety and even depression.
 
Remember, people are rarely posting their failures. People are only sharing the good stuff on social media. It’s their highlight reel. They don’t show the five times they missed a PR attempt or a video of them throwing up after they completed their bucket 8 squats or the video of them when their strap broke mid pull and they went flying into the air and slammed into the wall behind them.
 
In addition to the self-destruction from comparing ourselves to others, we are also faced with all of the negativity, anger and hurt on social media. Rarely do you see positive social media comments praising the successes of athletes. You see commenters tagging a friend on the video, which is a way of saying “check this out.” Then there are the hurtful and even nasty comments made by individuals who don’t know the athletes (their situation, previous training history, injuries, etc.). These commenters sometimes aren’t even coaches or athletes. Sometimes they have been in the sport for a very short period of time and lack the appropriate expertise or knowledge to be making a comment. I have read some pretty nasty comments and always think, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”
 
As I write this article, days ago someone I know, a national champion figure skater actually took his own life because of false accusations made against him via social media. It hurts to know that he felt like the only answer was to take his own life due to the power of the internet trolls and the pain that they brought to him. I am not sure if people leave negative comments because it makes them feel better about themselves, if it is out of jealousy, or if they are just truly mean people. Either way, their comments are potentially impacting the athletes mindset and not in a positive manner.
 
I fully believe that if it weren’t for a computer screen to hide behind, people would not say these hurtful and negative comments to the face of the person they were leaving a comment for on social media. The power of anonymity can cause people to be cruel and hurtful.
 
Before you read comments left on your social media, you need to be aware of how you react to other people’s comments. You need to be honest with yourself and know if you can read comments and truly not care about them. If you even have the slightest care, then I am going to suggest not to read the comments. Don’t sabotage yourself. If you want to post videos, fine, post videos but set the settings so no one can leave comments. You can still see the likes and get the dopamine rush from seeing all the “likes” and “loves.”
 
If you do read the comments that are left on your social media channels, evaluate if the person’s opinion matters and if you should truly care. If it is your coach or a teammate whose opinion you highly value, well, pay attention. If it is someone you don’t know or value, dismiss their comment. When you care about someone’s comments, you give them the power and control over your emotions and thoughts. By not focusing on you, you’re putting energy into something that is pointless and useless, it will not make you a better athlete. Your energy and focus should be put into your lifting. The only person you should compare yourself to is you, and only you.
 
The next time you comment on social media, think about what you’re going to write and why. Is it positive? Will your comment help or hurt the athlete? What are you trying to accomplish by commenting? Are you building someone up or knocking them down? Are you simply trying to make yourself feel good because you shared your opinion?
 
I’m not suggesting cutting social media. I know for some it’s like a drug. But seriously, step back and evaluate the amount of time you’re on social media. Apple recently released a new setting called “Screen Time.” It tracks how long you have been on social networking, entertainment, how many times you have picked up your phone and how many notifications you received that day. At the end of the week, you are sent a weekly report saying “Your screen time was up XX% from last week” or “Your screen time was down XX% from last week.” This is a nice little tool to assist with accountability in limiting your screen time. The time spent on social media could be used for your own self-improvement, both on and off the platform.